Month: October 2008

Yesterday I was bored waiting for my tires to be balanced & rotated at Costco, so to kill some time I decided to run a little social experiment that I had been meaning to do for a while. The experiment consisted of asking a single question, which I texted to almost everyone in my cell phone. The question was this:

Think- If you had to rate your life right now on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the WORST imaginable and 10 being the BEST, what would it be? Text me back -BD

Before I sent it out, I decided that my own answer would be a “7” …pretty darn good, but not so much that it can’t improve in certain areas. In my mind, a “1” would be defined as ultimate low, where life just could not possibly get any worse, save for death. On the other hand, I would imagine a “10” being the ultimate perfect life, where nothing goes wrong, there are no regrets and no limitations. Both scenarios I would expect to be essentially impossible, but, hey, you never know. I was curious therefore, to see where other people would place their lives on a scale from 1-10. And so I sent the text to around 108 people. Of those, 62 responded back. Here is a histogram of the results, showing the number of responses for each category:

This survey turned out to be really interesting. Six people responded with a 10, while two responded with a 1. The mean and median were both 7, but the most popular response was 8.

Obviously, my idea of a 10 being 100% perfection was a little different from how some responded, but neither is right or wrong, the question was subjective.

I do wonder though, what it would take to bump up your rating one point. For example, what would one need to do to go from a 6 to a 7? Or from a 7 to an 8? I also wonder how one’s response would change over time, since it’s really dependent on current circumstances which constantly fluctuate. I want to try to ask this again, say, a year from now & see what differences there are.

Overall though, I gotta say, I must have some pretty happy friends! =D